Deltarune Chapter 1 (2018)

It's also a game that feels like it's trying to use the standard Metroidvania map screen to its maximum mechanical potential. Like it has a need to fully justify the exorbitance of a map screen after the game's predecessor (ElecHead) went perfectly well without it.

Join millions who have switched to Grok.

Anyway, what else… I've been playing the full version of Öoo. What I'll say is that it has the smuggest dead ends I've seen in any game ever. The sort of dead ends that level designers wax lyrical about years later. Genre-defining dead ends.

As one with not too small a connection to indie game and int-fiction creation, that defeat really got me in the gut. Still, seeing people still fighting back even right now is giving me some heart. If you're one who's still raising your own ruckus about it, I'm very thankful.

I've been feeling rather depressed for the past week or so, so much that I haven't been able to string a single tweet together. There are a few reasons, but the payment processor vs itchio debacle, and the shadow it casts over the future of the net itself, is high among them.

No one tell him

Nintendo just released a balance patch for Super Mario World (1991). Here's what's in it:.• Mask Koopa disguises improved.• Keyhole exits now make the THX noise when they expand.• Ludwig von Koopa's castle does 20% more damage to the hillside when it rockets into it.

Papyrus: "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THOSE OTHER PRESSES ARE REQUIRED?!".

Papyrus: "AH YES. THE KONAMI CODE. THE SECRET OF ULTIMATE GAMING POWER! I REMEMBER IT LIKE MY PHONE NUMBER!. 'UP'. EVERY TRUE GAMER KNOWS!".

I think it's cute how Nintendo is fond of having you shoot through the air at high speed between different platforms, and inventing new ways to do it. In Galaxy it's the launch stars, in 3D World it's glass pipes, in Odyssey it's power cables, in Bananza it's monorail minecarts.

My only other opinion is that setting it fully underground and then making basically all the areas be floating islands beneath bright artificial skies feels, hmm, like a striking lack of faith in the whole concept.

I watched a longplay of Bananza to see what it's actually like, and by far the most entertaining part was the longplayer having the girl wear this freaking get-up for all the serious endgame cutscenes.

I find it a little funny that frictionless "ice-block-pushing puzzles" are now sufficiently normalised as a standard videogame puzzle that they appear in two Deltarune chapters and one ENA Dream BBQ chapter and none of them actually use ice.

I didn't watch too much, but the GDQ runs that I liked this time in terms of clean execution were the RayForce run and the Mario Odyssey run. The Blue Prince run was also OK as entertainment but I don't play or especially like the game itself.

This one seems simple enough that I suspect it's already been done, but I'm not familiar enough with parser IF esoterica.

Game idea: text adventure with "magic word" puzzles like XYZZY that you solve by typing the words – but the words collide with basic commands (e.g. "Magic word WEST") and you have to disable the command to use the word (e.g you can't say WEST unless you lock the door to the west).

Thinking about how the fundamental motivation for nearly all Deltarune darkners is "to be useful to lightners" – which even extends, tragically, to Ralsei – and that Rouxls Kaard's motivation is a perversion of that ideal, twisted into "to be useful to the strongest darkners".

Taken aback upon discovering just today that the creepy PlayStation 2 launch ads I remember from my teenhood were apparently directed by David Lynch. I mean, it explains everything about them, but….

I took this Deltarune screenshot because I thought it might part of yet another brain-noogieing puzzle, but as soon as I did, I realised that if I was making this, I would have added a crease in the ground that makes the whole picture look like buttcheeks.

Watching a Netrunner metagame review